Yes, Bob Dylan Deserves the Nobel Prize

The songwriter is a master of an American colloquial style, who discovered new ways of setting words and narrative to music.

By

Jim Fusilli

Oct. 13, 2016 2:35 p.m. ET

For those who endorse awarding Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature, the question might be: Why did the Swedish Academy wait so long? For those who oppose: A songwriter?

But there is never an expiration date on the acknowledgment of excellence, and Mr. Dylan is much more than a songwriter. One may quarrel that the award delays what appears to be the inevitable recognition by the academy of novelists Haruki Murakami and Philip Roth, among others, or that a composer for musical theater like Stephen Sondheim is the place to begin if songs are considered literature. But no one who knows Mr. Dylan’s work and its impact on his and subsequent generations of authors and composers can dispute its high quality.

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To the point of whether the words to songs comprise literature: It is the rare lyric that can stand on its own without the rhythm the music provides. The irony of assessing Mr. Dylan’s words absent the accompaniment is that he changed popular music by discovering and then exploring, repeatedly and often magnificently, new ways to set distinctive narratives to melody and rhythm as in “Mr. Tambourine Man” or “Like a Rolling Stone.” There is no comparable body of work, regardless of standard of measurement, by any other artist of the rock era.

The academy is acknowledging Mr. Dylan for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” This is a precise definition: It doesn’t claim that Mr. Dylan’s lyrics are poetry and thus comparable to the work of Nobel Prize-winning poets T.S. Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Neruda, W.B. Yeats and others. It suggests that his contribution to literature exists in a separate category, one in which he is a dominant figure. This is fact and it remains so. Those who think Mr. Dylan’s great writing can be found only in his most familiar early folk works—such as “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’”—should know that he is still writing well, even if his albums are no longer in the vanguard of rock and pop. His late-1990s and early 21st-century narrative songs like “Cold Irons Bound,” “High Water (for Charley Patton),” “Love Sick” and “Pay in Blood” are comparable in their storytelling prowess to one of his rock masterpieces like “All Along the Watchtower” or “Hurricane.” In recognizing that he is extending an American tradition, the academy is careful not to limit Mr. Dylan to a specific style of composition. He has written great songs in the form of the blues, country, folk, gospel and various styles of rock.

Mr. Dylan’s words can resonate independently because he is a master of an American colloquial style—a writer who sets words and narrative to music. All but inevitably his lyrics include an insight or turn of phrase that is distinctly his own. Born in Hibbing, Minn., Mr. Dylan is an American writer who emerged from the same upper Midwest soil as did F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elmore Leonard, Sinclair Lewis, Carl Sandburg and Thornton Wilder. As revealed in “Chronicles, Volume One,” his delightful autobiography—and also amply evident in his lyrics—Mr. Dylan is a voracious reader who appreciates story as well as wordplay and the flow of language.

The Nobel Prize in Literature confirms his status as something more than a songwriter of a kind with those who preceded him. For those who follow him closely, savoring his witticisms, poignant observations and the unexpected word at precisely the right time, the acknowledgment is long overdue, with all respect to Messrs. Murakami, Roth, Sondheim and others. Sentence by sentence and verse by verse, Mr. Dylan’s body of work is worthy of maximum celebration.

—Mr. Fusilli is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Email him at jfusilli@wsj.com and follow him on Twitter @wsjrock.

The Rolling Stones to play
For free in Cuba!
Watch and see;
They’ll film it and sell it—
Socialism, indeed!

Dylan will be next.
He’ll pull out his easel
And paint
The salty Cuban fisherman
And steely dock workers,
Then sell his paintings for
Thousands to adorn the walls
Of wealthy socialites.

Stalwarts of capitalism
Capitalizing on the
Lure of socialism.
Who are they fooling?

Capitalism eats its
Socialistic young
Who are lured by
The word, “free”—
Free love, free stuff,
Free college, free money.
“Free money?”
How does that work?

Free is the name of
A dinosaur rock group
And the name of a
Just as ancient song by The Who:
“I’m freeee!”

Not much is free, and
Who but The Stones
And Dylan
Understand it more—
They in their estates
On Montauk Island in New York,
Like Jagger,
And Malibu Beach in California,
Like Bobby Zimmerman,
With their secured walls
And protection from police.
Protection from what?

Capitalism sets them free
And eats its socialistic young,
Who wail for what
They don’t have
To be given to them—
No charge!

Capitalism Trumps socialism
In all its naïve glory.
“I was so much older then /
I’m younger than that now.”
One man’s ugly is
Another man’s fair maiden.

Socialism promises a halcyon land
And delivers caged hypocrisy,
Where everything rhymes with “free.”

So, which is the better,
As The Rolling Stones
Play for free
And Cubans dance in satisfaction
In their bloodied streets?

Bob Dylan was honored by MusiCares, the charity organization that aids musicians in need, at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Friday night. After performances by artists including Tom Jones, Sheryl Crow, Neil Young, Beck, Jackson Browne and others, Dylan himself took a rare opportunity in the spotlight to deliver a 30-plus-minute acceptance speech.

Expansive, funny and insightful, Dylan didn’t pull any punches, calling out songwriters who had criticized his work while indicting Nashville and commercial country music.

He was introduced by former President Jimmy Carter, and walked out to a standing ovation. After thanking the organizers, Dylan referred to his notes and began by saying, “I’m going to read some of this.”

Because of moments of applause, and some echoey acoustics, a few of Dylan’s words were inaudible on the recording I’ve consulted, and I’ve noted as such. Though it upsets him to hear it (see below), Dylan does sometimes mumble and slur his words.

Bob Dylan’s MusiCares person of the year acceptance speech:

__

I’m glad for my songs to be honored like this. But you know, they didn’t get here by themselves. It’s been a long road and it’s taken a lot of doing. These songs of mine, they’re like mystery stories, the kind that Shakespeare saw when he was growing up. I think you could trace what I do back that far. They were on the fringes then, and I think they’re on the fringes now. And they sound like they’ve been on the hard ground.

I should mention a few people along the way who brought this about. I know I should mention John Hammond, great talent scout for Columbia Records. He signed me to that label when I was nobody. It took a lot of faith to do that, and he took a lot of ridicule, but he was his own man and he was courageous. And for that, I’m eternally grateful. The last person he discovered before me was Aretha Franklin, and before that Count Basie, Billie Holiday and a whole lot of other artists. All noncommercial artists.

Trends did not interest John, and I was very noncommercial but he stayed with me. He believed in my talent and that’s all that mattered. I can’t thank him enough for that.

Lou Levy runs Leeds Music, and they published my earliest songs, but I didn’t stay there too long. Levy himself, he went back a long ways. He signed me to that company and recorded my songs and I sang them into a tape recorder. He told me outright, there was no precedent for what I was doing, that I was either before my time or behind it. And if I brought him a song like “Stardust,” he’d turn it down because it would be too late.

He told me that if I was before my time — and he didn’t really know that for sure — but if it was happening and if it was true, the public would usually take three to five years to catch up — so be prepared. And that did happen. The trouble was, when the public did catch up I was already three to five years beyond that, so it kind of complicated it. But he was encouraging, and he didn’t judge me, and I’ll always remember him for that.

Artie Mogull at Witmark Music signed me next to his company, and he told me to just keep writing songs no matter what, that I might be on to something. Well, he too stood behind me, and he could never wait to see what I’d give him next. I didn’t even think of myself as a songwriter before then. I’ll always be grateful for him also for that attitude.

I also have to mention some of the early artists who recorded my songs very, very early, without having to be asked. Just something they felt about them that was right for them. I’ve got to say thank you to Peter, Paul and Mary, who I knew all separately before they ever became a group. I didn’t even think of myself as writing songs for others to sing but it was starting to happen and it couldn’t have happened to, or with, a better group.

They took a song of mine that had been recorded before that was buried on one of my records and turned it into a hit song. Not the way I would have done it — they straightened it out. But since then hundreds of people have recorded it and I don’t think that would have happened if it wasn’t for them. They definitely started something for me.

The Byrds, the Turtles, Sonny & Cher — they made some of my songs Top 10 hits but I wasn’t a pop songwriter and I really didn’t want to be that, but it was good that it happened. Their versions of songs were like commercials, but I didn’t really mind that because 50 years later my songs were being used in the commercials. So that was good too. I was glad it happened, and I was glad they’d done it.

Pervis Staples and the Staple Singers — long before they were on Stax they were on Epic and they were one of my favorite groups of all time. I met them all in ’62 or ’63. They heard my songs live and Pervis wanted to record three or four of them and he did with the Staples Singers. They were the type of artists that I wanted recording my songs.

Nina Simone. I used to cross paths with her in New York City in the Village Gate nightclub. These were the artists I looked up to. She recorded some of my songs that she [inaudible] to me. She was an overwhelming artist, piano player and singer. Very strong woman, very outspoken. That she was recording my songs validated everything that I was about.

Oh, and can’t forget Jimi Hendrix. I actually saw Jimi Hendrix perform when he was in a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames — something like that. And Jimi didn’t even sing. He was just the guitar player. He took some small songs of mine that nobody paid any attention to and pumped them up into the outer limits of the stratosphere and turned them all into classics. I have to thank Jimi, too. I wish he was here.

Johnny Cash recorded some of my songs early on, too, up in about ’63, when he was all skin and bones. He traveled long, he traveled hard, but he was a hero of mine. I heard many of his songs growing up. I knew them better than I knew my own. “Big River,” “I Walk the Line.”

“How high’s the water, Mama?” I wrote “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” with that song reverberating inside my head. I still ask, “How high is the water, mama?” Johnny was an intense character. And he saw that people were putting me down playing electric music, and he posted letters to magazines scolding people, telling them to shut up and let him sing.

In Johnny Cash’s world — hardcore Southern drama — that kind of thing didn’t exist. Nobody told anybody what to sing or what not to sing. They just didn’t do that kind of thing. I’m always going to thank him for that. Johnny Cash was a giant of a man, the man in black. And I’ll always cherish the friendship we had until the day there is no more days.

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice.

People would say, “What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby little waif?” And she’d tell everybody in no uncertain terms, “Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs.” We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Love. And she’s a free, independent spirit. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn’t want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman with devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back.

These songs didn’t come out of thin air. I didn’t just make them up out of whole cloth. Contrary to what Lou Levy said, there was a precedent. It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock ‘n’ roll and traditional big-band swing orchestra music.

I learned lyrics and how to write them from listening to folk songs. And I played them, and I met other people that played them back when nobody was doing it. Sang nothing but these folk songs, and they gave me the code for everything that’s fair game, that everything belongs to everyone.

For three or four years all I listened to were folk standards. I went to sleep singing folk songs. I sang them everywhere, clubs, parties, bars, coffeehouses, fields, festivals. And I met other singers along the way who did the same thing and we just learned songs from each other. I could learn one song and sing it next in an hour if I’d heard it just once.

If you sang “John Henry” as many times as me — “John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I’ll die with that hammer in my hand.”

If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written “How many roads must a man walk down?” too.

Big Bill Broonzy had a song called “Key to the Highway.” “I’ve got a key to the highway / I’m booked and I’m bound to go / Gonna leave here runnin’ because walking is most too slow.” I sang that a lot. If you sing that a lot, you just might write,

Georgia Sam he had a bloody nose

Welfare Department they wouldn’t give him no clothes

He asked poor Howard where can I go

Howard said there’s only one place I know

Sam said tell me quick man I got to run

Howard just pointed with his gun

And said that way down on Highway 61

You’d have written that too if you’d sang “Key to the Highway” as much as me.

“Roll the cotton down, aw, yeah, roll the cotton down / Ten dollars a day is a white man’s pay / A dollar a day is the black man’s pay / Roll the cotton down.” If you sang that song as many times as me, you’d be writing “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more,” too.

I sang a lot of “come all you” songs. There’s plenty of them. There’s way too many to be counted. “Come along boys and listen to my tale / Tell you of my trouble on the old Chisholm Trail.” Or, “Come all ye good people, listen while I tell / the fate of Floyd Collins a lad we all know well / The fate of Floyd Collins, a lad we all know well.”

“Come all ye fair and tender ladies / Take warning how you court your men / They’re like a star on a summer morning / They first appear and then they’re gone again.” “If you’ll gather ’round, people / A story I will tell / ‘Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw / Oklahoma knew him well.”

If you sung all these “come all ye” songs all the time, you’d be writing, “Come gather ’round people where ever you roam, admit that the waters around you have grown / Accept that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone / If your time to you is worth saving / And you better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone / The times they are a-changing.”

You’d have written them too. There’s nothing secret about it. You just do it subliminally and unconsciously, because that’s all enough, and that’s all I sang. That was all that was dear to me. They were the only kinds of songs that made sense.

“When you go down to Deep Ellum keep your money in your socks / Women in Deep Ellum put you on the rocks.” Sing that song for a while and you just might come up with, “When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez and it’s Easter time too / And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through / Don’t put on any airs / When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue / They got some hungry women there / And they really make a mess outta you.”

All these songs are connected. Don’t be fooled. I just opened up a different door in a different kind of way. It’s just different, saying the same thing. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary.

Well you know, I just thought I was doing something natural, but right from the start, my songs were divisive for some reason. They divided people. I never knew why. Some got angered, others loved them. Didn’t know why my songs had detractors and supporters. A strange environment to have to throw your songs into, but I did it anyway.

Last thing I thought of was who cared about what song I was writing. I was just writing them. I didn’t think I was doing anything different. I thought I was just extending the line. Maybe a little bit unruly, but I was just elaborating on situations. Maybe hard to pin down, but so what? A lot of people are hard to pin down. You’ve just got to bear it. I didn’t really care what Lieber and Stoller thought of my songs.

They didn’t like ’em, but Doc Pomus did. That was all right that they didn’t like ’em, because I never liked their songs either. “Yakety yak, don’t talk back.” “Charlie Brown is a clown,” “Baby I’m a hog for you.” Novelty songs. They weren’t saying anything serious. Doc’s songs, they were better. “This Magic Moment.” “Lonely Avenue.” Save the Last Dance for Me.

Those songs broke my heart. I figured I’d rather have his blessings any day than theirs.

Ahmet Ertegun didn’t think much of my songs, but Sam Phillips did. Ahmet founded Atlantic Records. He produced some great records: Ray Charles, Ray Brown, just to name a few.

There were some great records in there, no question about it. But Sam Phillips, he recorded Elvis and Jerry Lee, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. Radical eyes that shook the very essence of humanity. Revolution in style and scope. Heavy shape and color. Radical to the bone. Songs that cut you to the bone. Renegades in all degrees, doing songs that would never decay, and still resound to this day. Oh, yeah, I’d rather have Sam Phillips’ blessing any day.

Bob Dylan, the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year, speaks of his life and music to the crowd. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Merle Haggard didn’t even think much of my songs. I know he didn’t. He didn’t say that to me, but I know [inaudible]. Buck Owens did, and he recorded some of my early songs. Merle Haggard — “Mama Tried,” “The Bottle Let Me Down,” “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.” I can’t imagine Waylon Jennings singing “The Bottle Let Me Down.”

“Together Again”? That’s Buck Owens, and that trumps anything coming out of Bakersfield. Buck Owens and Merle Haggard? If you have to have somebody’s blessing — you figure it out.

Oh, yeah. Critics have been giving me a hard time since Day One. Critics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t critics say that same thing about Tom Waits? Critics say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. What don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get special treatment? Critics say I can’t carry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Really? I’ve never heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free?

What have I done to deserve this special attention? No vocal range? When’s the last time you heard Dr. John? Why don’t you say that about him? Slur my words, got no diction. Have you people ever listened to Charley Patton or Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters. Talk about slurred words and no diction. [Inaudible] doesn’t even matter.

“Why me, Lord?” I would say that to myself.

Critics say I mangle my melodies, render my songs unrecognizable. Oh, really? Let me tell you something. I was at a boxing match a few years ago seeing Floyd Mayweather fight a Puerto Rican guy. And the Puerto Rican national anthem, somebody sang it and it was beautiful. It was heartfelt and it was moving.

After that it was time for our national anthem. And a very popular soul-singing sister was chosen to sing. She sang every note — that exists, and some that don’t exist. Talk about mangling a melody. You take a one-syllable word and make it last for 15 minutes? She was doing vocal gymnastics like she was on a trapeze act. But to me it was not funny.

Where were the critics? Mangling lyrics? Mangling a melody? Mangling a treasured song? No, I get the blame. But I don’t really think I do that. I just think critics say I do.

Sam Cooke said this when told he had a beautiful voice: He said, “Well that’s very kind of you, but voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.” Think about that the next time you [inaudible].

Times always change. They really do. And you have to always be ready for something that’s coming along and you never expected it. Way back when, I was in Nashville making some records and I read this article, a Tom T. Hall interview. Tom T. Hall, he was bitching about some kind of new song, and he couldn’t understand what these new kinds of songs that were coming in were about.

Now Tom, he was one of the most preeminent songwriters of the time in Nashville. A lot of people were recording his songs and he himself even did it. But he was all in a fuss about James Taylor, a song James had called “Country Road.” Tom was going off in this interview — “But James don’t say nothing about a country road. He’s just says how you can feel it on the country road. I don’t understand that.”

Now some might say Tom is a great songwriter. I’m not going to doubt that. At the time he was doing this interview I was actually listening to a song of his on the radio.

It was called “I Love.” I was listening to it in a recording studio, and he was talking about all the things he loves, an everyman kind of song, trying to connect with people. Trying to make you think that he’s just like you and you’re just like him. We all love the same things, and we’re all in this together. Tom loves little baby ducks, slow-moving trains and rain. He loves old pickup trucks and little country streams. Sleeping without dreams. Bourbon in a glass. Coffee in a cup. Tomatoes on the vine, and onions.

Now listen, I’m not ever going to disparage another songwriter. I’m not going to do that. I’m not saying it’s a bad song. I’m just saying it might be a little overcooked. But, you know, it was in the top 10 anyway. Tom and a few other writers had the whole Nashville scene sewed up in a box. If you wanted to record a song and get it in the top 10 you had to go to them, and Tom was one of the top guys. They were all very comfortable, doing their thing.

This was about the time that Willie Nelson picked up and moved to Texas. About the same time. He’s still in Texas. Everything was very copacetic. Everything was all right until — until — Kristofferson came to town. Oh, they ain’t seen anybody like him. He came into town like a wildcat, flew his helicopter into Johnny Cash’s backyard like a typical songwriter. And he went for the throat. “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”

Well, I woke up Sunday morning

With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.

And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad

So I had one more for dessert

Then I fumbled through my closet

Found my cleanest dirty shirt

Then I washed my face and combed my hair

And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.

You can look at Nashville pre-Kris and post-Kris, because he changed everything. That one song ruined Tom T. Hall’s poker parties. It might have sent him to the crazy house. God forbid he ever heard any of my songs.

You walk into the room

With your pencil in your hand

You see somebody naked

You say, “Who is that man?”

You try so hard

But you don’t understand

Just what you’re gonna say

When you get home

You know something is happening here

But you don’t know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?

If “Sunday Morning Coming Down” rattled Tom’s cage, sent him into the looney bin, my song surely would have made him blow his brains out, right there in the minivan. Hopefully he didn’t hear it.

I just released an album of standards, all the songs usually done by Michael Buble, Harry Connick Jr., maybe Brian Wilson’s done a couple, Linda Ronstadt done ’em. But the reviews of their records are different than the reviews of my record.

In their reviews no one says anything. In my reviews, [inaudible] they’ve got to look under every stone when it comes to me. They’ve got to mention all the songwriters’ names. Well that’s OK with me. After all, they’re great songwriters and these are standards. I’ve seen the reviews come in, and they’ll mention all the songwriters in half the review, as if everybody knows them. Nobody’s heard of them, not in this time, anyway. Buddy Kaye, Cy Coleman, Carolyn Leigh, to name a few.

But, you know, I’m glad they mention their names, and you know what? I’m glad they got their names in the press. It might have taken some time to do it, but they’re finally there. I can only wonder why it took so long. My only regret is that they’re not here to see it.

Traditional rock ‘n’ roll, we’re talking about that. It’s all about rhythm. Johnny Cash said it best: “Get rhythm. Get rhythm when you get the blues.” Very few rock ‘n’ roll bands today play with rhythm. They don’t know what it is. Rock ‘n’ roll is a combination of blues, and it’s a strange thing made up of two parts. A lot of people don’t know this, but the blues, which is an American music, is not what you think it is. It’s a combination of Arabic violins and Strauss waltzes working it out. But it’s true.

The other half of rock ‘n’ roll has got to be hillbilly. And that’s a derogatory term, but it ought not to be. That’s a term that includes the Delmore Bros., Stanley Bros., Roscoe Holcomb, Clarence Ashley … groups like that. Moonshiners gone berserk. Fast cars on dirt roads. That’s the kind of combination that makes up rock ‘n’ roll, and it can’t be cooked up in a science laboratory or a studio.

You have to have the right kind of rhythm to play this kind of music. If you can’t hardly play the blues, how do you [inaudible] those other two kinds of music in there? You can fake it, but you can’t really do it.

Critics have made a career out of accusing me of having a career of confounding expectations. Really? Because that’s all I do. That’s how I think about it. Confounding expectations.

“What do you do for a living, man?”

“Oh, I confound expectations.”

You’re going to get a job, the man says, “What do you do?” “Oh, confound expectations.: And the man says, “Well, we already have that spot filled. Call us back. Or don’t call us, we’ll call you.” Confounding expectations. What does that mean? ‘Why me, Lord? I’d confound them, but I don’t know how to do it.’

The Blackwood Bros. have been talking to me about making a record together. That might confound expectations, but it shouldn’t. Of course it would be a gospel album. I don’t think it would be anything out of the ordinary for me. Not a bit. One of the songs I’m thinking about singing is “Stand By Me” by the Blackwood Brothers. Not “Stand By Me” the pop song. No. The real “Stand By Me.”

The real one goes like this:

When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me / When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me / When the world is tossing me / Like a ship upon the sea / Thou who rulest wind and water / Stand by me

In the midst of tribulation / Stand by me / In the midst of tribulation / Stand by me / When the hosts of hell assail / And my strength begins to fail / Thou who never lost a battle / Stand by me

In the midst of faults and failures / Stand by me / In the midst of faults and failures / Stand by me / When I do the best I can / And my friends don’t understand / Thou who knowest all about me / Stand by me

That’s the song. I like it better than the pop song. If I record one by that name, that’s going to be the one. I’m also thinking of recording a song, not on that album, though: “Oh Lord, Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

Anyway, why me, Lord. What did I do?

Anyway, I’m proud to be here tonight for MusiCares. I’m honored to have all these artists singing my songs. There’s nothing like that. Great artists. [applause, inaudible]. They’re all singing the truth, and you can hear it in their voices.

I’m proud to be here tonight for MusiCares. I think a lot of this organization. They’ve helped many people. Many musicians who have contributed a lot to our culture. I’d like to personally thank them for what they did for a friend of mine, Billy Lee Riley. A friend of mine who they helped for six years when he was down and couldn’t work. Billy was a son of rock ‘n’ roll, obviously.

He was a true original. He did it all: He played, he sang, he wrote. He would have been a bigger star but Jerry Lee came along. And you know what happens when someone like that comes along. You just don’t stand a chance.

So Billy became what is known in the industry — a condescending term, by the way — as a one-hit wonder. But sometimes, just sometimes, once in a while, a one-hit wonder can make a more powerful impact than a recording star who’s got 20 or 30 hits behind him. And Billy’s hit song was called “Red Hot,” and it was red hot. It could blast you out of your skull and make you feel happy about it. Change your life.

He did it with style and grace. You won’t find him in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He’s not there. Metallica is. Abba is. Mamas and the Papas — I know they’re in there. Jefferson Airplane, Alice Cooper, Steely Dan — I’ve got nothing against them. Soft rock, hard rock, psychedelic pop. I got nothing against any of that stuff, but after all, it is called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Billy Lee Riley is not there. Yet.

I’d see him a couple times a year and we’d always spent time together and he was on a rockabilly festival nostalgia circuit, and we’d cross paths now and again. We’d always spend time together. He was a hero of mine. I’d heard “Red Hot.” I must have been only 15 or 16 when I did and it’s impressed me to this day.

I never grow tired of listening to it. Never got tired of watching Billy Lee perform, either. We spent time together just talking and playing into the night. He was a deep, truthful man. He wasn’t bitter or nostalgic. He just accepted it. He knew where he had come from and he was content with who he was.

And then one day he got sick. And like my friend John Mellencamp would sing — because John sang some truth today — one day you get sick and you don’t get better. That’s from a song of his called “Life is Short Even on Its Longest Days.” It’s one of the better songs of the last few years, actually. I ain’t lying.

And I ain’t lying when I tell you that MusiCares paid for my friend’s doctor bills, and helped him to get spending money. They were able to at least make his life comfortable, tolerable to the end. That is something that can’t be repaid. Any organization that would do that would have to have my blessing.

I’m going to get out of here now. I’m going to put an egg in my shoe and beat it. I probably left out a lot of people and said too much about some. But that’s OK. Like the spiritual song, ‘I’m still just crossing over Jordan too.’ Let’s hope we meet again. Sometime. And we will, if, like Hank Williams said, “the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

Scientists sneak Bob Dylan lyrics into articles

Five Swedish scientists have confessed that they have been quoting Bob Dylan lyrics in research articles and are running a wager on who can squeeze the most in before retirement.

The game started seventeen years ago when two Professors from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, John Jundberg and Eddie Weitzberg, wrote a piece about gas passing through intestines, with the title “Nitric Oxide and inflammation: The answer is blowing in the wind”.

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The latter part of the title is from one of Dylan’s most famous tracks.

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“We both really liked Bob Dylan and we thought the quotes really fitted nicely with what we were trying to achieve with the title,” Professor Weitzberg told The Local.

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The pair decided to stick to the theme and went on to splice other lyrics into their work, including one entitled “The times they a-changing”.

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“We’re not talking about scientific papers – we could have got in trouble for that – but rather articles we have written about research by others, book introductions, editorials and things like that,” said Weitzberg.

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A few years later a librarian spotted an article written by two other medical professors working at the same university and connected the foursome.

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The title was “Blood on the tracks: a simple twist of fate”. It incorporated the name of both a Bob Dylan album and one of his tracks.

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This led Professors Junberg and Weitzberg to invite their colleagues to take the idea to the next level and they started competing to see who could get the most Bob Dylan lyrics into their articles before retirement.

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The winner gets lunch in a restaurant in Solna, just north of Stockholm, where their university is based.

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One other Professor has joined the contest.

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Kenneth Chien, Professor of Cardiovascular Research has also been quoting his idol for years and his fellow scientists recently got wind of his articles which include: “Tangled up in blue: Molecular cardiology in the postmolecular era”.

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“We really are not the only ones who try to be smart and catchy in our headlines,” insisted Professor Weitzberg.

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“If you read other scientific articles you’ll find people trying to be clever in different ways”.

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Asked about the attention his wordplay is starting to gather in Sweden, The Local was sure to ask him “how does it feel?”.

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“I would much rather become famous for my scientific work than for my Bob Dylan quotes,” laughed Weitzberg.

Marianne Faithfull’s Gloriously Reckless Rock ‘n’ Roll Life

The onetime pop ingénue, style icon and muse to the Rolling Stones releases a new album on the 50th anniversary of ‘As Tears Go By’

By

Rich Cohen

Updated Sept. 4, 2014 10:59 a.m. ET

LIVE THROUGH THIS | ‘This is a very personal record about things I’ve been going through with my loved ones,’ Faithfull says of ‘Give My Love to London,’ out this month. ‘It’s about how to get through.’ Illustration by Mats Gustafson

CERTAIN LIVES STAND for an entire era. Cole Porter is the Jazz Age and the crash. Alfred P. Sloan, whose reign at General Motors began when city streets were still rank with manure and ended with them awash in tail fins, is the auto age. Marianne Faithfull, who had her first hit record in 1964, a song written by a 20-year-old Mick Jagger and his friend Keith Richards, is rock ‘n’ roll. She was 17, a primly blond Brit who elicited aristocratic fantasies. Approaching her at a party where members of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were in attendance, Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham said, “I’m gonna make you a star, and that’s just for starters, baby!”

In the ensuing decades, Faithfull lived a multiplicity of lives, riding and, at times, nearly being destroyed by an ecstatic energy she helped unleash. She was the “It Girl.” A pop ingénue in ’64, a headliner in ’65, a torrid one-night stand of Richards’s in ’66, the muse and partner of Jagger for several years, the singer who rejected Bob Dylan, Miss X at the notorious Redlands drug bust in ’67, best friends with model Anita Pallenberg; dabbler in black magic and hallucinogens. She tasted and touched everything that fascinated her baby-boomer demographic. “She was always perceived as someone very brave, very cool and very much self-created,” said British actress Charlotte Rampling. “She’s always been her own woman, in no one’s mold, and it’s very impressive when a person can live that way.”

Faithfull’s life echoed the course of rock ‘n’ roll itself, which started with the playful excitement of sock hops and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers and dead-ended, for a time, in atonal melodies and concept albums—which is just another way of saying “experience.” By the ’70s, she had lost it all and was on the street, a junky cadging a dose. She turned whispery, desperate.

She came back in 1979 with the titanic breakthrough record Broken English, turning her brush with the dark side into music. She had followed the classic trajectory of the hero: the rise to stardom, the split with society, the journey through a shadow land, the return. Through it all, she’s remained an object of fascination, allegedly a subject for iconic songs, among them “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by the Rolling Stones. When I asked if she was the inspiration behind the Stones’ “Wild Horses,” she said, “I was told so, but that doesn’t mean anything. Musicians do that all the time. ‘This song’s for you, darlin’.’ ”

It’s been 50 years since the release of her first single, “As Tears Go By,” the hit that began it all. A new record—Give My Love to London—will mark the anniversary. If you want to experience the passage of decades, play the new album beside her first numbers. In the early ’60s, her voice was not faux-naïf but the real thing—simple, childlike—which was part of its appeal, the fantasy of innocence corrupted. No one has ever been younger than Faithfull was in 1964. And no one’s ever been older than she is on the new record. She’s a dance-hall singer, moaning in a dive on the edge of town, her voice rough from years of smoking, shouting, staying out all night in the rain—a wisdom-filled rasp. It’s the quality that made those late Frank Sinatra records, after his voice was shot, electrifying. It’s not just the songs you hear; it’s the life—though the song titles alone tell a story: “The Price of Love,” “Give My Love to London,” “Love More or Less,” “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” Here’s a singer with her eyes on the horizon. “This is a very personal record about things I’ve been going through with my loved ones,” she said. “It’s about how to get through.”

Faithfull is 67, splits her time between Dublin and Paris, smokes (e-cigarettes), walks, sings, writes, thinks. Though no longer the sex symbol she once was, she’s still beautiful. I caught up with her by phone in Paris. She’d broken a hip this summer, which, along with another injury, gave her time to reflect. “Six months on your back will do that,” she told me. “You become introverted. You start thinking about things, too many things.”

We talked about her childhood growing up in a small town just north of Liverpool. Her mother was an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat, Baroness Erisso, whose great uncle, Baron Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, wrote Venus in Furs, the book that gave rise to the term masochist; her father was a British intelligence officer in World War II, later a professor of Italian literature. Despite this pedigree, her childhood was tough. Her parents split when she was six years old; there was never much money. Faithfull was educated at a convent, where she learned the basics of this world and the next.

“Were you Catholic?”

“Not originally, no, but I had to become a Catholic. I couldn’t have survived otherwise. I had been a very bright pupil in the sixth form at the convent. I was preparing to go to university or art school or maybe music school. And then—well, I was discovered, for God’s sake! I wouldn’t have been human if I hadn’t wanted to get out of home.”

The first big moment came in 1964, at a launch party for a teen singer named Adrienne Posta, a famous soiree of that swinging London moment; Faithfull’s social circle and her connections to the city’s exploding music scene had brought her to a party where several young rock stars were in attendance. And here comes the Stones’ exotic boy manager, approaching the convent girl through a haze of cigarette smoke. “Andrew f—ing Oldham, excuse my French,” Faithfull recalls, laughing. “He was fascinating. I had never met a man who wore makeup, never met anybody who talked that way: ‘I’m gonna make you a star, baby.’ I had watched Sweet Smell of Success and all those Laurence Harvey films, so I did understand where he got his persona.”

“ “Marianne has always been her own woman, in no one’s mold. It’s very impressive when a person can live that way.” ”

—–Charlotte Rampling

A week later, Faithfull was at a recording session with Oldham and engineer Mike Leander. According to legend, Oldham had locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen in Chelsea a few months before, saying, “Don’t come out till you’ve written a song.” It took them ages to figure out how to compose for the Stones. Their early numbers were ballads, melancholy tunes. Oldham farmed them out to other clients. “I first heard [“As Tears Go By”] in the studio,” Faithfull said. “It wasn’t meant to be the single; it was meant to be the B side. It was some scam of Andrew’s whereby I was meant to sing an awful song by Lionel Bart. It was obviously wrong. Mike Leander said, ‘Why don’t we try the B side?’ There must’ve been an acetate of Mick and Keith. I heard that once or twice, then went in and sang. It was magic.”

Faithfull has rerecorded that song since, finding new resonance. She’s grown into the song’s sadness as she’s aged.

It is the evening of the day.
I sit and watch the children play.

Does the 50th anniversary strike her as significant, or is it just a number? “It’s very significant,” she said, “because it’s not just that ‘As Tears Go By’ was released; it was also the beginning of a completely different life. It’s when I became a recording artiste, as they say, with an e on the end.”

Faithfull has known Jagger and Richards since she was a girl and they were boys. Brian Jones, a founding member of the Stones, was dead before his 28th birthday, but she knew him in his last days. She was already in a serious relationship with a gallery owner named John Dunbar (his Indica Gallery is where John Lennon and Yoko Ono would first meet). She married Dunbar when she was 18, and the couple had a young son, which did not stop her from hooking up first with Richards, and then, later, in a more meaningful way, with Jagger. For a time, she drifted between Dunbar and Jagger, sometimes bringing her son along, sometimes leaving him behind. By 1967, she was connected in the public mind with Jagger. They were a reigning couple of the era, the F. Scott and Zelda of swinging London. For a time, tired of motels and theaters, she gave up touring for a life inside the Stones’ inner circle—the band had achieved a remarkable fusion of mainstream and avant-garde. They threw parties, took drugs and had so much fun. It was a golden moment that unfurled like a day that seems to never end, until it does.

For Faithfull, the turning point, her Waterloo, came in ’67 with the drug bust at Redlands, Richards’s country home in Sussex, on the southern coast of England. It was a tabloid scandal that stands as a high watermark of the acid age: Jagger and Richards and various hangers-on getting bombed on LSD in the company of a woman who, because she was not named, became the mystery—the Miss X—at the core of it all.

“Redlands was my moment of truth, when I realized I was in a situation I couldn’t stand,” she told me. “It had been fun for a long time, and I guess we all made the mistake: We believed nothing could touch us, completely forgetting about working-class and middle-class envy, how people would feel. It didn’t even occur to me in my arrogance.”

Faithfull was not arrested, but Jagger and Richards and two other friends were. There was a tremendous trial—almost a show trial—that cemented the Stones’ reputation as rock ‘n’ roll outlaws. Jagger and Richards spent a night in prison before public sentiment helped secure their freedom. Crucial was the publication of an editorial in the conservative London Times under the headline, “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?” Though she was supposed to be ashamed, Faithfull showed up in court to support Mick and Keith but also to demonstrate her defiance.

Of course, there’s the pose, and then there’s the way you feel. “I got terrible hate letters,” Faithfull told me. “I’ll never forget. The most awful articles in the newspapers. I was only 20. I believed everything, took it all to heart. I got very depressed. Mick and Keith, God bless ’em, went on to be bigger, better, stronger, brighter, more wicked, more naughty, more powerful. But as a woman—it was completely against the rules. We scuttered on for quite a time after that, trying to pretend it was OK and we could still have fun, but I was beginning to feel bad about myself. And then, you know, I got the usual sort of problems every woman gets with Mick Jagger. I simply couldn’t stand it any longer, all the different women and all that stuff.”

The psychic break came in the summer of ’69, when Brian Jones, who’d been kicked out of the band weeks before and was suffering from paranoia, drowned in a swimming pool. This began a run of dead rock stars: Brian, Jimi, Janis, Jim. They were all 27 when they died. After Jones’s death, Faithfull and Jagger flew to Australia to appear in Tony Richardson’s movie Ned Kelly, about an outlaw bank robber. Faithfull took sleeping pills before the flight, took more when she got to the hotel. At some point, she woke up, jet-lagged, walked dead-eyed to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. It was Brian’s face looking back. He beckoned her to join him inside the glass. The windows were sealed, so, instead of jumping, she took a fistful of pills and lay down beside the sleeping rock star.

“It was an awful thing to do to Mick, to Tony Richardson, to my mother, to my little tiny son who was in England, to myself,” she said. “I do remember having these feelings of ‘I’ll show them! They’ll realize when I’m dead they shouldn’t have done that!’ Completely forgetting you’ll be dead! I understood it years later when I had a good shrink in Boston and she gave me an essay Freud wrote on melancholy. In it he describes insanity of the suicide, where the id, the ego and the superego split. That’s when you actually see yourself dying, jumping out the window, whatever it is you choose. And then you’re at your own funeral listening to what people say about you.”

Days went by as she slept. In a dream, she met Brian, who told her how lonely he’d been. She walked him to the edge of nowhere, let him go. She woke up in a hospital with Mick and her mother at her side. “I had taken 150 Tuinals and was unconscious for six days,” she said.

FOR FAITHFULL, the period after the near suicide meant a switch from mind-expanding drugs to opiates, from a quest for experience to a search for numbness, escape. A personal disaster for Faithfull, the hangover that followed the ’60s was also part of a general malaise: Vietnam, the slide into dissolution, Watergate, OPEC, bell-bottoms. At some point, Faithfull became too self-destructive. In her memoir, she recounts a conversation she overheard between Jagger and Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records. “There’s only one thing to do,” Ertegun told Jagger. “I’ve seen a lot of heartbreak with junkies. Believe me, old friend, it wrecks the lives of everybody around them, as well. It’s a bottomless pit, and she’ll drag you into it unless you let her go.”

“ “Marianne has lived so many lives already, and has many more to live.” ”

—–Yoko Ono

Jagger and Faithfull broke up. A short time later, while in a London taxi, she learned of Jagger’s engagement to Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias. Faithfull got out, got drunk, got arrested, and then spent the night in jail. From there, it was down the rabbit hole that led to the street. She lost touch with friends, family. Most painfully, she lost custody of her son. At times, she seemed like the ragged princess of the Dylan song “Like A Rolling Stone,” strung out on streets she once commanded like a queen. Yet, through it all, she remained true to her quest to sample every kind of experience. “For me, being a junkie was an admirable life,” she wrote later. “It was total anonymity, something I hadn’t known since I was 17. As a street addict in London, I finally found it. I had no telephone, no address. Nobody knew me from Adam.” Somehow, she survived.

When she found her way back in 1979 with Broken English, it was with a new sound, a new voice—gritty, wizened, experienced. “It was another person you heard on that record,” Rampling said. “And it spoke so clearly about what she had been through and how she had lived.” A string of great records followed: Strange Weather; Before the Poison; Easy Come, Easy Go; Horses and High Heels. Her late albums are her best—powerful because they suggest a life beyond music—and stand as a distillation. The pure ingénue at the beginning of the ’60s, the hippie chick by the end; the heroin girl at the beginning of ’70s, the proto-grunge girl at the end—Faithfull has always been a personification of her time.

These days, she stands for the rock ‘n’ roll generation grown old and dignified. “Marianne has lived so many lives already, and has many more to live,” Yoko Ono wrote in response to emailed questions. “She always keeps her chin up. As time goes by, she just gets better and better.” That’s her new record: chaos recollected in the calm after the storm.

“Everyone has to go through it themselves,” Faithfull told me, laughing. “But, just to be kind, I will give you my motto: ‘Never let the buggers grind you down.'”

I’m new to blogging and apologize, Elsie, for this late response. I just figured it all out. Lots for me still to learn about this blogging experience.

2. At a film festival in Telluride, about twenty years ago, I saw Clint Eastwood go into a Port-a-John and then come out a while later. I then hiked down the mountain to Telluride with him (along with a hundred or so others).

3. I wrote a screenplay adaptation of a true story about Bat Masterson which was to be filmed by director Earl Bellamy (assistant director to George Cukor on “From Here To Eternity” and the original “A Star Is Born.” Bellamy died suddenly while the money was being arranged for the production. The project sort of died with Earl. Talking to him over the phone so many times was one of the most incredible “happenings” in my life. He told me that the famous beach scene in “From Here To Eternity” with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr was handled tastefully, but still powerfully, and that movies nowadays show way too much skin and action than they used too. I tend to agree.

4. I was born in California, raised in the Panhandle of Texas, worked at a coal mine in Wyoming for eight months and have lived in Colorado since then.

5. I’m a fan of Formula One, Indy and The Dakar. I saw British driver Dan Wheldon win his fifth of six Indy races in 2005, which established his reputation. He died tragically in a horrible, heartbreaking, flaming crash involving numerous cars just last year in Vegas–the last race of that season. I still get choked up when the video images of the crash come back into my memory.

6. I play guitar and write songs. I still own an Ovation electric/acoustic that I bought with my summer earnings in 1973. I was fresh out of high school and worked for a grain elevator in Texas during the wheat harvest. My guitar’s name is “Jordan” after a character in “The Great Gatsby.”

7. I have a current urge to visit Tvedestrand, Norway, which is close to Boroy Island, where Richard Wagner was stranded once. While stranded there, he came up with the idea for his opera “The Flying Dutchman,” the story of which I love and relate to. I actually wouldn’t mind just hiding out there for at least a handful of months to radically change my surroundings, my culture, my world. Breaking patterns cold turkey can be a good thing.

My nominees are:

(Since I’m relatively new to blogging, there are a handful of sites I visit regularly, one in particular that is an “island” for me, in a sense. Blogging is really cool in how it allows you to visit other cultures. It is very much a global community kind of experience. Teilhard de Chardin wrote of his idea of a noosphere, which is a sphere of mind, or of thought. The web is a noosphere, similar to a geosphere, a biosphere, the atmosphere. Blogging is certainly a noosphere, but more. It unites common minds and common spirits, common joys and common sorrows, common “positive politics.” I’m rambling, but what I mean to say is that the sites I know the best have received numerous awards, numerous times already, but since they have visited me so much in the short month I’ve been online, I will nominate them anyway, in no particular order.)

This is a excerpt from a moving interview in today’s Wall Street Journal with Dion, who sang such early rock & roll gems as “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer” and “Abraham, Martin & John.” He gave up his seat to Buddy Holly on the plane that ultimately crashed on February 3, 1959, killing Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper. That day is still known as “the day the music died.” Dion thought thirty-six dollars was too much to pay for a plane ticket because at the time that amount represented one-month’s rent.

As the tour continued on, Bobbie Vee joined the tour with 18-year-old Bob Dylan on piano, as a replacement for the recently killed Buddy Holly. Dylan is now 70, still produces new music (Nikki Jean, a backup singer for Lupe Fiasco, just recorded a song she cowrote with Dylan, “Steel and Feathers.”) and still tours worldwide for most months of the year. –SB

By STEVE DOUGHERTY

Dion and the Belmonts rose from neighborhood street corners to the top of the pop charts in the 1950s with songs like “I Wonder Why” and “A Teenager in Love.” Now 72, Mr. DiMucci, who went on to solo stardom with “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer” and “Ruby Baby” before releasing his final No. 1 hit, 1968’s “Abraham, Martin and John,” was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989. He lives in Florida with his wife of 48 years. His latest CD, “Tank Full of Blues,” comes out Tuesday.

You were the only headliner who survived the 1959 tour when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash. Did you ever wonder why them and not you?

I was 19 years old and touring with those guys was the best thing that ever happened to me. Buddy and Ritchie and I, we all had the new Fender Stratocaster guitars; mine was all white; Buddy’s had the sunburst body. We jammed every night on that bus. The heater kept breaking down in subzero weather. It was so cold on the bus Buddy’s drummer got frostbite and had to leave the tour. Carlo of the Belmonts filled in for him. Buddy and the Bopper were from Texas; Ritchie was from L.A.—they didn’t know cold like that. They wanted off that bus! Buddy chartered the plane; we flipped for the two other seats. The Bopper and I won the toss. But the price was $36 each. That was the exact amount of the monthly rent my parents argued over all my life. I couldn’t justify spending a month’s rent on a plane ride. Plus I could handle the cold. I told Ritchie, “You go.” Then all of a sudden, they’re gone. I remember sitting alone on the bus after and there was Buddy’s guitar; I was in shock. I thought, what the hell is life about; why am I here and they’re not? I was angry. It took me a long time to process that loss.

In your recent book [“Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth,” about his Christian faith] you say Feb. 3, 1959, wasn’t the day the music died but the day it was born. What do you mean?

There’s a line in Scripture that says a grain of wheat doesn’t bear fruit until it dies and takes seed. Buddy Holly and the Crickets created the form—guitars, bass and drums—that every rock band after him, the Beatles, Stones and all the rest, followed. They wrote and performed their own songs like he did and his music is still being played today. And that tour, it gave seed to a new generation. Bobby Vee was a 16-year-old kid who filled in for Buddy at the next gig in Moorhead, Minn. We got to know each other and we always kept in touch after that. When Bob Dylan broke big, Bobby Vee told me that his piano player that night was Dylan, who was 18 and still known as Bob Zimmerman. [Mr. Dylan’s spokesman said: “Bob says it’s so.”] He had been in the audience for one or two of the Winter Dance Party shows and now he was on the stage with Bobby Vee, standing in for Buddy Holly. Bobby told me Dylan played so loud he couldn’t hear himself sing; he said you couldn’t control the guy; it was like someone let him out of a cage.

Related Post: Please see [ Revolution du Jour and Another Slice of American Pie ] for a great follow-up story on how the song “American Pie” details the earthquake-like shift that ocurred in America between the time of Holly’s 1959 death and the Stones’ tragic Altamont concert in late 1969. –SB

I guess I can understand Beck in this sense: There was a time when I agreed with Glenn far more than I do now. I still watch his show, but it’s getting dicey. He said on his show recently that he agrees with Ron Paul on about 50% of the issues. My agreement with Beck may sink lower than that. So, would I vote for Beck if he were running for president, like Dr. Ron Paul is? There was a time when I probably would have (his second year at FOX). Now, the answer would be no, just like his is now no to Dr. Paul.

Here’s how I see it, although I still don’t completely understand why I’m seeing what I’m seeing: Beck is in the tank for the capitalist machine (Romney), even though he calls Romney scary. He’s also in the tank for Israel. I’ve been to Israel twice on biblical pilgrimages, during the Intifadah in the mid-late Eighties. I support an Israeli state alongside a Palestinian state. Beck seems to support Israel OVER our American Constitution, as if his status as a Christian soldier supercedes constitutional limits on foreign aggression. Beck was the one who championed the Constitution in his early years. Now he’s on a white horse, as some Lancelot against the caliphate. If anyone is delusional out there about America’s foreign policy, it’s Beck.

What makes him different from the caliphate, in this sense–that God’s on HIS side? The caliphate says God is on THEIR side. Beck, it seems, wants to use America’s power to create a Christian caliphate–because God is on his side, and he’s the “white knight?” Take out the caliphate as an constitutional nation, not a Christian nation, I say. Beck, of all people, should understand this.